3 ms·

> IMSLP is great for finding quick scores of random stuff, but the editions are often pretty shoddy, like either super outdated with weird editorial decisions t

• rdiddly 3y ago
  I don't presume to know what they meant, but as an example of something I think fits the bill, I downloaded "Bill Bailey Won't You Please Come Home" and the lyrics are full of a certain type of phonetic transliteration from vernacular Afro-American English (as if it's a foreign language or something) the likes of which you would probably never see today (e.g. lots of "dat" and "dey" and "throw'd" and "de whole day" and so on).
  • InCityDreams 3y ago
    I'd love to know if there was a whole class of people that actually did speak in "derogatory caricature".
• dmitrij 3y ago
  In the last decades philological standards for reproducing the original form of a musical work taking into account historical musical traditions, composing and performance practices have become much more thorough. Editions from the 19th and early 20th century which you can find on IMSLP because they are out of copyright restrictions often don't meet these scholarly standards. They very often reflect performance practises and the style of their time. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urtext_edition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urtext_edition.
  • wuiheerfoj 3y ago
    I’d add that some of the older texts are really badly laid out - often handwritten or in a strange typeface that makes them really hard to mentally parse when you‘re used to the uniformity of modern scores. That said imslp is still a life-saver and playing music would be a lot more painful (and expensive!) without it
  • perihelions 3y ago
    But – there are tons of prestigious, high-quality, Urtext editions on IMSLP, because https://imslp.org/wiki/IMSLP:Copyright_Made_Simple#Urtext_Editions https://imslp.org/wiki/IMSLP:Copyright_Made_Simple#Urtext_Ed... (copyright laws afford Urtext editions shorter terms of protection than original works)
  • mavhc 3y ago
    Is there a standard file format for scores? I see MusicXML and MEI.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
• hackernewds 3y ago
  piqued not picked*
• Kaijo 3y ago
  To give an example to further illustrate answers you've received. In the 1800s it was common to produce heavily editorialized volumes of Bach, Scarlatti and other baroque keyboard works, with tempo and dynamic indications, written-out ornamentation, phrasing and articulation marks, pedalling, and other directions that would have been a relatively alien language in the actual autograph and early editions. These were much more reflective of (romantic) performance practices of the day than of the original period. While much of it could be taken as potentially interesting suggestion about interpretation on modern instruments, it gets hopelessly muddled when the score fails to distinguish between what content is the editors' vs. the composer's, as they so often do. Something like this of Bach's C major prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier, book 1, shows basically all the different kinds of unwanted editorializing I described: https://imslp.org/wiki/File:PMLP05948-WTC_Mugellini_No._1-12.pdf https://imslp.org/wiki/File:PMLP05948-WTC_Mugellini_No._1-12... Compare that with: https://imslp.org/wiki/File:PMLP05948-WTC_1_No_1-12.pdf https://imslp.org/wiki/File:PMLP05948-WTC_1_No_1-12.pdf A modern Urtext edition would also include detailed information about which manuscript and early edition sources it was prepared from, and any unresolved or variant readings between these sources, with performance suggestions (apart sometimes from fingerings) relegated to supplementary notes that are clearly written by the editors and not the composer.